Tag: news

Today we’re marking Slashdot’s 20th birthday. 20 years is a long time on the internet. Many websites have come and gone over that time, and many that stuck around haven’t had any interest in preserving their older content. Fortunately, as Slashdot approaches its 163,000th story, we’ve managed to keep track of almost all our old postings – all but the first 2^10, or so. In addition to that, we’ve held onto user comments, the lifeblood of the site, from 1999 onward.

20 years is indeed a long time, and especially so on the Internet. It’s pretty much impossible to imagine the Web without social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Without YouTube. With no Wikipedia. Without Gmail. Heck, without even so much as Google search. Well, it was around, but not many people knew about it yet. Blogs weren’t invented yet. Web 2.0 was years away. There were no RSS feeds yet. Heck, many people who can’t imagine their lives without the Internet today weren’t even born yet!

I was introduced to Slashdot back in 1997 or 1998 by my good friend and mentor – Vladimir Ivaschenko (aka hazard). I think it was on the same day as he told me about Freshmeat.net, later re-branded as Freecode.com, the best resource at the time to find and learn about Linux applications (to which I haven’t been in years), and Linux Weekly News, which I am still a frequent reader of.

I’ve been reading Slashdot since then myself, and I have recommended it to every IT professional and technology enthusiast without exception. IT industry in general, the Web, and the Open Source movement wouldn’t have been the same without Slashdot. And neither would I.

I have learned a lot about a lot from Slashdot – new companies, new technologies, new ideas, different perspectives, influential people, and more. I’ve linked to Slashdot posts and comments from this blog more times than I can remember. (Google Search estimates 1,060 pages linking from this blog to Slashdot since I started posting here 17 years ago).

If I had to pick a single my most memorable moment about Slashdot, that would be without the doubt September 11, 2001. I wasn’t anywhere near the United States that day, but it wasn’t about the USA. The whole world has changed that day. Nobody knew what was going on. Everything just stopped, or slowed down to a crawl. Everybody was trying to understand, or at least find more information about what happened. All the news sites – from the major ones, like CNN, to the small local newspapers – were dead under the traffic spike. Slashdot was pretty much the only one that could cope. It was slow, but it was there. Countless people in the comments were sharing bits and pieces of information. People were sharing photos and videos and redistributing them across a number of FTP sites.

At the time I was working at PrimeTel. There were quite a few people and everyone was desperate to know more. I remember downloading the pictures at turtle crawling speeds, and sending them off to a huge TV I had next to my desk (I was working on project involving video walls and a network of window displays). A crowd of people from the office were just standing nearby, staring at the TV with planes exploding into the towers, towers collapsing one by one, and all the havoc and rescue efforts afterwords. This was something… A decade and a half later, I still get shivers remembering that day.

This was the most powerful moment. But there were many more. There were numerous times when I started researching something just because of a story or a comment posted on the site. There were a few times when I changed my opinion after an insightful comment. And there were plenty of moments when I burst into uncontrollable laughter. Oh you guys in the comments, you are something!

I’d like to thank everybody who contributed to Slashdot in these last 20 years and who made it possible, and who kept it alive and kicking. You rock! Here’s to the next 20 years and more stories and insightful, interesting, and funny comments – Cheers!

Charlottesville was a lot in the news recently. I didn’t pay much attention, but now I see why. This is crazy. It almost feels unreal, like a really long trailer or a promotion video to a new movie. But it’s not. It’s real life and it’s happening now.

It’s far from funny, but standup comedians are often some of the smartest people, with excellent observation skills and the unbeatable use of words. So here’s Jim Jefferies take on this, with which I agree wholeheartedly.

I woke up earlier than usual today. It was hot and my air condition wasn’t working for some reason. It turns, the power was gone. Not just my apartment or building. Driving through the city to work, I saw a number of traffic lights not working. People at work from all over Limassol confirmed that they experienced a power cut as well. What happened? Apparently, there was a huge explosion at Cyprus naval base. People say there was an ammunition stock that exploded. Rumor has it that 10 to 12 people are presumed dead. There is extensive damage to the area, including the power station, where the fire broke down.

The news are scarce at the moment. Here is a link I found that confirms some of the rumors I’ve heard around the office.

NICOSIA, Cyprus — A Cyprus Defense Ministry spokeswoman says around 10 people are feared dead following a massive explosion at a naval base.

Aliki Stylianou could not immediately confirm the cause of the explosion which occured at the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base on the Mediterranean island’s southern coast on Monday at around 6:00am (0300GMT).

State television CyBC is reporting that the explosion also caused numerous injuries and extensive damage to homes in villages near the naval base.

Police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos said that a fire at a nearby power station has been contained.

While having my morning cup of coffee and going through the Cyprus Mail articles, I caught myself pausing and thinking a few times. That doesn’t happen that often (thinking, not pausing), so I thought I’d share the bits that halted me.

The first articles was titled “TEPAK goes Wi-Fi“. WTF is TEPAK? Not everyone knows, especially in the morning, with the full cup of coffee. TEPAK is of course Cyprus Unviersity of Technology. Once again, with proper use of capitals: cyprus University of TECHNOLOGY. So, they have some Wi-Fi there now. Good. Welcome to the 21st century! No, seriously. Let’s read a bit of the article.

LIMASSOL’S technology university, TEPAK, yesterday went wireless. The Wi-Fi connection was inaugurated by Limassol mayor Andreas Christou, the president of TEPAK’s administrative committee Elipida Keravnou and the Vice President of the Electricity Authority (EAC) Loizos Papacharalambous.

Wow! That sounds a bit odd. Why do they need a whole mayor to inaugurate the launch of a commonplace technology?

On behalf of the EAC Papacharalambous said the network had 40 points of access and covered areas of historic importance in Limassol including Heroes Square, Anexartisisas Street and part of the beach front.

Here it gets a bit funny. I understand that the university is located in the old part of town and things are tight in there. But when I think of the students who scattered between the beach front, the Heroes Square, which is famous for all the cabarets and prostitution that goes on there, and Anexartisisas Street, which is a shopping center of sorts. Anyway, that’s not important. The important comes later and it actually puts the whole article in to perspective, so it makes sense.

Papacharalambous said all Cytanet users would also have free access through the Cytanet Wireless Zone service by using their own access codes while other users would be able to use the service by using access codes acquired through pre-paid cards, credit cards or by sending an SMS message.

So, all of that is just a publicity stunt for Cytanet – one of the island’s Internet Service Providers. Now it all makes sense. It wasn’t about the Cyprus Unviersity of Technology at all. It was about Cytanet covering part of the old town with a Wi-Fi network. Which they will charge you for.

By now I obviously lost all interest in the article, even if it was almost over. But the next one I came around puzzled me too. It was about “Two officers injured directing traffic“. In particular this bit:

One of the officers, who was hit while on his motorbike, escaped serious injuries after the airbag in his uniform deployed and broke his fall.

Say what? An airbag in the uniform? That’s the first time I hear about something like this. Google search for “police uniform airbag” returned 53,000 results only and nothing looked interesting, not even the pictures. Anyone can shed some light on this? Cause I am all out of coffee by now.

The rumour has it that WordPress 3.0 will have custom post types built-in. These are excellent news! This means that 90% of all web development companies will be able to drop their own, complex and ugly in-house built systems and switch to WordPress development. And while WordPress code isn’t the prettiest thing you can find, it’s still better than most of that code that will be dropped soon. And it’s small, which is also an improvement.

If you are not familiar with the concept of custom post types, these are basically your average posts + custom fields + theme and plugin support + steroids. In short, these are beautiful. It doesn’t really matter what your blog is about – cooking, political news, movies, or technology – you can always think of a way to make posts better than they are in the default installation. For example, cooking recipes can have a section on ingredients, cooking instructions, and serving instructions. You can have your theme support those sections and display them in a consistent and beautiful way. Now you probably wouldn’t even bother. You’ll do your best with built-in post editor and maybe, if you are half-insane, you’ll play with custom fields. But that’s too technical, complicated, and not even remotely convenient. You can try one of those few plugins available, but chances are you’ll either come across a limitation, or a plugin won’t work for you at all. With WordPress 3.0′ custom post types your chances are better.

And why did I mention web development companies? Because that is exactly what so many of them do – build web applications that work with custom object types (cars in automotive shops and rentals, real estate items, products with online shops, etc). A lot of work is put into defining those object types, building searching functionality, promotion bits, nested categories, integrating image galleries and contact forms, and such. Needless to say, most of this functionality is already available in WordPress, either built-in or via a plugin. Custom data types though weren’t. And now that custom posts will make it into WordPress, most of the average small company’s needs will be so much easier to take care of.

This is a much needed and long awaited bit of functionality and I am very excited for it to finally make it. These will cause a new wave of activity around WordPress, and we’ll see more and more sites built with it. Awesome!

I’ve noticed that @cyprusmail Twitter account became much more active recently. Today I followed one of the posted links to read the news article, and was surprised by the new newspaper’s web site. It is still in beta, but it’s already pretty good!

Finally, there is someone who knows what he (she?) is doing. Based on Drupal CMS, utilizing Amazon S3 service, integrating with Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook, featuring proper RSS feed, slick feedback form, and even placeholders for stuff blogs – that’s quite an achievement!

I definitely welcome the new face (and body) of the Cyprus Mail and wish them great success and to keep up the good job. Now their content is finally matched by its presentation and surrounding functionality.

I haven’t been following the US presidential race closely. I remember watching a few speeches by Ron Paul, and thinking that he is a really nice guy. But somehow I doubted that he could win. Barack Obama’s speeches were the next best thing, even though I saw just a few of them. Here is a quote from Slashdot discussion on the subject, that I particularly enjoyed:

The thing that absolutely amazes me is the international reaction to Obama’s win. I knew that the reputation of America and Americans had been battered over the past few years, but I never suspected that it was as bad as it was. I watched the results last night, said a little “huzzah!” when Obama was declared, listened as McCain gave a warm, dignified, and gentlemanly concession speech, and then went to bed thinking I’d seen it all. I woke up at about 4:45 this morning and I’ve been flipping between news stations ever since. I got a little emotional last night during the speeches, but I’m absolutely devastated by the number of non-Americans who are dancing in the streets over Obama’s win. I never thought I’d see video of a few hundred Chinese people jumping around and chanting “Obama! Obama!” A reporter in France walked up to a woman and simply said “Obama?” Her face lit up and she simply said “C’est formidable!” Kenyans are throwing feasts in his honor. Arab and Persian states are happy. Israel is happy. Pakistan is happy. Australians are losing their damned minds over it. Russia is… well, they’re kinda grumpy, but they’re not having a good year.

PrimeTel upgrades for even faster Internet speeds and provides 4Mbps / 512Kbps as an upgrade option for the PrimeHome and PrimeADSL2+ subscribers. The additional monthly fee for the PrimeHome subscribers is EUR65,92 while for the PrimeADSL2+ subscribers is EUR53,33. Read more

Anybody tried that already?

Note to PrimeTel : By the way, I’d much prefer an RSS feed from your site to those Greek emails that you send me. Thank you.

Flickr has recently added support for videos. Many thought (and some still do) that it was an April Fool’s joke, because the information broke out on the 1st of April, but it seems that it was no joke after all.

When I heard about it, I was a bit surprised, and had a slight negative feeling about it. Flickr seemed to do just fine as they were. The photo site community is very different from the video site community. And don’t we already have YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, and a tonne of other video sites? Why Flickr should be spoiled by videos?

But after I spent some time reading about and checking the implementation, I have to say that I like it. There is a FAQ about this new feature which does a good job explaining the idea behind it. There are many ways to define what a video is and how it should be handled. Flickr went for a very nice definition – “a long photo“. They have imposed a 90 second time limit on all videos, as well as allowed uploads to Pro accounts only for now. That’s about as right as it could have been done.

Indeed there is a need for short video support on Flickr. I do have a YouTube account, but it’s not what I need right now. I am not doing a lot of videos, and the ones I do usually complement the photos nicely. Most of my videos are very short and rather personal. For these needs, YouTube is a bit too much with its noisy community, channels, and subscribers. But Flickr videos seems to be spot on! I suspect there going to be a few changes and adjustments to the current functionality in the near future, but even as it is now, it’s pretty handy.